At the last panel discussion, moderated by Shun-ichi Murata (Director, UNDP Japan), panelists talked about issues such as women in politics, women’s position in war and peace, surviving gender-based violence, reconciliation and not least the comfort women issue.

Gender and Public Toilets
Ronni Alexander (Professor of Transnational Relations, Kobe University) related her own experience as someone whose gender does not fit neatly into the men/woman dichotomy set up e.g. in public toilets:“I’ve been dragged out of Japanese women’s toilets by police” (because the other women in the toilet thought she was a man). She noted that this panic happens because a man going into a women’s toilet implies a threat of sexual violence.

Ending the Tabooization of Sexual Crime
Ai Awaji (Staff Writer, Jiji Press) said that she felt that the journalistic code of protecting the anonymity of victims of sexual violence and not naming the crime ‘rape’ directly perpetuates the problem of stigmatization and prevents healing. She also noted that the absence of women in the media, police, the justice system and politics makes it hard to make any progress on the issue of violence against women.

Warcrimes? War itself is a crime
In the discussion, political scientist and peace activist Douglas Lummis said (commenting on the comfort women issue) that the fight for the abjudication of war crimes could help legitimize war. “Isn’t this idea there could be a ‘clean, legal, crime-free war’ an illusion? War itself needs to be punished and criminalized.”

Abe in the company of Holocaust deniers
Andrew Horvat (Visiting Professor, Tokyo Keizai University) commented that Prime Minister Abe’s request for more evidence on the comfort women system put him “in very strange company,” i.e. that of Holocaust deniers. “Some people see the gas chambers and still ask for more evidence.” The problem is wanting evidence on facts that are established, even allowing for a big margin of exaggeration. No evidence will ever suffice if there is no will to accept it. He also said that accepting the issue would be a great diplomatic opportunity, and it was “really unfortunate” that the Abe administration would not take advantage of it.

Where are the women in politics
Andrew Horvat also wondered why there are so few women in Japanese politics, and Lummis chimed in wanting to know why most women vote for men. Momoyo Ise (Member of the Governing Board, UN Association of Japan) explained multiple factors, ranging from lack of support by the parties for women candidates (not giving them time, funding and space to speak) and the fiancing and family system (a politician’s son becomes a politician, inherits all his support base, basically gets rubberstamped into office) to household chores leaving them little time. She also noted that a lot of the women candidates running for Diet seats do not study national issues enough but stay too local in their focus. Ai Awaji added that the media stereotype female politicians so heavily that they can never develop a profile and it’s a miracle anyone votes for them at all.